Skin

Years ago she lost her skin. She'd shed it one day upon hearing dire and cruel news. Words of utter sadness and despair had jammed their way into her ears and her body shuddered so violently that her skin just fell right off into a little pile. Try as she did she could not get it back on. So she picked up her heap of outer flesh, carried it into her garden and dropped it onto the roots of a scraggly red rose bush. At least it might do some good, she thought.

In that moment, she wished she were a reptile with a new layer of skin underlying the old. But alas she was human and there was none. She expected to feel cold or pain but instead she felt only numbness.

So she went into her abode and garbed herself in armor thinking of the scaly metal as the closest thing to reptile skin, as a tough hide that would now have to protect her bare bones and raw under-flesh. But though her new outer wear did its job, it was bulky and heavy, and she clinked and lumbered as she made her way through her days. 

Over time she became an outsider.  None of her friends would have her. It became too hard to converse with a person sheathed in metal, her face masked behind a visor, and who creaked and grated with each movement.

But she felt safe. Now no dire news could find its way past her well-defended deterrent. And even though she was alone, she was finally steady, quiet and content.

One day she went out to her garden. The thin, scraggly red rose bush had grown strong and robust. It had absorbed her skin and integrated it into its thorny system. Its roses now blossomed crimson and full, fleshy and plump in their appearance. 

She ungloved her hand and plucked a rose. And in that instant, her skin felt her and remembered her, and cloaked her body from within the armor. She recalled her vigor and became flooded with the beauty and strength of the rose. Just as she had shed her skin, she now shed her metal scales. And like a reptile, she was garbed in a new derma, pink and plump but tensile and strong. Now she could once again go forth, recovered of her dire news, and no longer in need of her sheltering metallic carapace.

©kcasady